My physical and emotional boundaries went straight through to my sexual ones, there were none. They were destroyed by an older man when I was a child and by someone by the name of Marlo.
Marlo and I had the most tumultuous, loving, hate filled relationship of my life. Though it is not in my heart to hate and I still wish him the very best to this day. Unfortunately and fortunately, Marlo is a sociopath. I learned that I was just a toy in his game of three, eventually moving past physical to verbal back to physical abuse, then to sexual abuse. I still can’t get to that part of my brain, the sexual abuse, because it was when I first dissociated. I’m not sure if we were still a two then. But I have my doubts, he soon made me a pawn in his sadomasochistic relationship he carried out with his new girlfriend. She was a 42-year-old married woman with a family of her own. Ultimately I left the relationship not because I had bruises around my neck and chest I hid with makeup, but because once you cheat you no longer have a place in my life. You cannot love me and someone else at the same time, I deserved much better.
That got me to kick him out, but not to have him not come back. In 2013 I made the mistake of calling him and going to a strangely ironic wedding of a high school friend of his. She had invited me but not invited Marlo. I wanted to reach out to make things okay. A mistake I have made many times before and many times after. We met for coffee, we had sex, and I went back to Wisconsin unsettled with a Marlo texting me constantly. Though this time, Marlo had an unforeseen plan. I was drugged when he came to visit me on New Years Eve of 2013. I don’t know what we did all I can remember is him asking for my computer passwords, and having sex. He said it was molly but it was special K. Even as I transcribe these words I can’t trust myself that it was special K, because I was drugged, only friends after told me their hypotheses. We had sex and I must have been saying “stop, stop” because these words have haunted me for the time after every night before I go to sleep. When I think of the sexual things he made me do even in our relationship all I can think of is “stop, stop.” I woke up the next day puking my guts out.
I had done ecstasy with him twice before, but this took the cake for Marlo. He told me he never regretted cheating on me in my home for over a year and a half when I was newly sober. He said it was the best thing that had ever happened to him. He said his girlfriend was the devil and he wanted to marry me, but he wanted to keep her in his life and have us both. I was what got them off, keeping secrets from me, having sex in my bed, having sex in our second bedroom and having me wait in the bathroom after coming home from work as I heard heavy high heels clank out and close our front door while Marlo was in the bedroom. He said that if he was to do it all over again he wouldn’t change a thing. He said the only reason they had stopped was because her son walked in on them wearing masks and he called Marlo his dad. That broke my heart.
I thought at the time the past was in the past, little did I know that Marlo had no plans of “never letting it ever happen where he didn’t know where I was ever again.”
to look is not to see 